Rent controls: Ed Miliband feels your pain – he just doesn't know what to do about it

Ed Miliband set out plans for Labour to intervene in another market, this time the one for private rented accommodation. Tenants need greater security and protection from unreasonable rent hikes, the Labour leader said. His plan follows Labour proposals to freeze retail energy prices and break up big banks. A cap rail fares could be next.

Sadly for Mr Miliband, his latest policy ran into difficulties rather quickly. Having suggested that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors were helping devise a proposed cap on rent rises, Labour had to do some fast talking when RICS said, in terms: Oh no we’re not. You can read Peter Dominczak’s account of that sorry tale here.

Overall, the Labour intervention raises one of the essential essay questions of this Parliament: “Ed Miliband is good at analysing the British political mood, but bad at developing policies to respond to it. Discuss.”

Mr Miliband thinks that after the financial crisis, we’ve fallen out of love with markets, at least in their unfettered, red-in-tooth-and-claw form. We’re also ambivalent about the people and organisations who’ve done well from those markets, he thinks: today, landlords join big banks and big energy firms on his “predator” list.

A lot of people live in rented accommodation. A lot of them aren’t terribly happy about that. In particular, they’re unhappy with the growing amount of money they have to spend on rent. So they may well appreciate a politician who looks like he understands that problem: even our own Tim Stanley is won over today. Still, that doesn’t mean they will embrace the Labour solution to that problem.

That was broadly what happened last year when Mr Miliband proposed his freeze on energy prices. The detail of the policy itself failed to convince many people, but the signal it sent was important: Ed Miliband feels your pain. He gets it – even if he doesn’t really know what do about it. It’s a curious blend of success and failure that arguably defines Mr Miliband’s leadership to date – and explains Labour’s mixed fortunes under him.

It’s worth noting that the Conservatives have called the Labour policy a “gimmick”. That’s what they called the energy price freeze, before eventually adopting their own bill-cutting policy. Don’t hold your breath for Tory rent-control: the question of whether to intervene in markets really is a clear dividing line between two parties. But don’t be too surprised if the Conservatives make their own overtures to Generation Rent either.